What’s Behind the Confederate Battle Flag Purging?

The Obama-Boehner debt limit increase bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a 269-161 vote August 1, solely as a result of Republican votes. But most of the GOP presidential candidates, perhaps smelling the will of the voters, voted against the so-called Budget Control Act of 2011, which would raise the debt limit as much as an additional $2.4 trillion. GOP congressmen overwhelmingly voted in favor of the bill with a 174-66 vote. Meanwhile, Democrats were evenly divided, 95-95, meaning that half the Democrats opposed their leadership while most Republicans supported their leadership. The vote followed a week of tough talk and whip-cracking in the House Republican caucus. “Get your a** in line,” House Speaker John Boehner demanded at a private meeting of the entire House Republican conference July 27, according to multiple press accounts. “I can’t do this job unless you are behind me.”

As Democrat-turned-Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry continues to tease Americans with “will he or won’t he?” run for President, many Lone Star State voters are taking a closer look at his record — particularly on the issue of immigration. Of the four border states (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California), Texas presides over more than half of the nation’s international border with Mexico: 1,254 miles of the Rio Grande River. Though the other three states have their fair share of serious immigration problems, Texas — by its sheer size — has the lion's share. For the record, the Governor’s website gives his position on border security: “There can be no homeland security without border security, and there can be no higher priority than protecting our citizens.”

After attending the Bilderberg conference in Switzerland in June, Facebook’s marketing director, Randi Zuckerberg, announced that she had solved the cyberbullying issue: Prohibit anonymous Internet activity. In addition to being the director of marketing for the social media icon, Zuckerberg is the sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The siblings attended the Bilderberg conference where Mark Zuckerberg delivered a key address. Many of the Internet’s elites were present for the annual secret confab held this year in St. Moritz, Switzerland. According to an exposé by The New American’s own Alex Newman, many such luminaries were on hand at the conference:

In 1958, Congress created NASA, the National Aeronautical and Space Administration. The rationale for America's first venture into outer space was national security: to insure that the country could defend itself against any threat from space. The Soviets appeared to have a head start through Sputnik and similar short space flights. The United States quickly realized the invaluable military benefits of satellites and developed "smart" weapons using geosynchronous communication systems to deliver ordnance precisely. Thus, all the first astronauts were military officers. Since that time, the space endeavor has devolved into just another federal program. The United States faces no threat from any nation on Earth that can outflank it in space. Though NASA conducts certain research projects, there is little reason to believe that philanthropies and private corporations could not accomplish this research just as easily. In fact, one of the major breakthroughs in cosmology was accomplished at Bell Laboratories almost 50 years ago when scientists there discovered microwaves. Background radiation consistently showed that the basic temperature of outer space was four degrees Kelvin, or four degrees above absolute zero.

Many years ago, the Saturday Evening Post was one of the best-known magazines in America. But somehow I learned that the Saturday Evening Post was actually published on Wednesday morning. That was a little disconcerting at first. But it was one of the most valuable lessons, that words do not necessarily reflect reality. Recent statistics on the average wealth or net worth of blacks are a painful reminder that rhetoric favoring blacks does not mean that politicians using such rhetoric are actually helping blacks. The media seized upon the statistics published by the Pew Research Center to show that whites averaged far more net worth than blacks, and that this disparity was now greater than it was in years past. But what is even more revealing is that the net worth of blacks in 2009 was less than half of what it was in 2005. What happened to cause such a sharp loss in such a few years?

Americans have been paying closer attention to the United Nation’s Agenda 21, a plan for global management of people and resources, and rightfully so. The plan virtually micromanages every aspect of human life, violating several Constitutional rights in the process. A number of agencies in the United States have already signed on to efforts to enforce Agenda 21, including the Department of Transportation, which has recently proposed a rule change for farm equipment that exhibits greater government control. Agenda 21 is defined by the United Nations as a “comprehensive plan for action to be taken globally, nationally, and locally by organizations of the United Nations system, governments and major groups in every area in which humans impact the environment.” The New American’s William Jasper wrote of Agenda 21 in February, explaining that the plan is virtually all encompassing:

Give Florida Gov. Rick Scott and his fellow Republicans in the state legislature credit. When they say they aren’t going to implement ObamaCare, they mean it — even if it costs their state millions of dollars in federal grants. “I don’t want to waste either federal money or state money on something that’s unconstitutional,” Scott told the New York Times in a recent interview. Likewise, state Rep. Matt Hudson, Chairman of the Health Care Appropriations Subcommittee, said, “I do not believe that act is the right thing for the country or the right thing for Florida, and I am not going to start implementing things that I don’t believe in.” The Gray Lady details the results of these officials’ principled stand against ObamaCare:

President Obama announced his debt deal with House Speaker John Boehner with a dramatic quote about the intensity of the cuts in the deal: "The result would be the lowest level of annual domestic spending since Dwight Eisenhower was President — but at a level that still allows us to make job-creating investments in things like education and research." The problem is that his statement was an outright lie. Though Obama's statement sounded good, but a White House memo on the deal reveals his words to be false. It reads that the deal...

A report released by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) calls for a sweeping overhaul of U.S. medical device regulation, challenging the FDA to broaden government oversight and enact stricter approval standards for thousands of devices — ranging from artificial hip and knee joints to bypass-surgery devices. Originally commissioned by the FDA, the Institute of Medicine urged FDA officials last Friday to foster "a new framework that used both premarket clearance and improved postmarket surveillance of device performance to provide reasonable assurance of the safety and effectiveness of Class II devices." The IOM protests that premarket screenings are far too lax, as current standards neglect to provide a thorough examination of the safety and effectiveness of medical devices.

The congressional Republican leadership has agreed to White House demands to raise the national debt by as much as $2.4 trillion and continue deficit spending into the indefinite future. The deal would trim about $900 billion from the anticipated $7 to 8-trillion deficit over the next 10 years — a little more than 10 percent of the total — and allow total federal spending to continue to grow rapidly. It would also set up a bipartisan commission charged with finding an additional $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction. All of official Washington touted the deal as one of fiscal responsibility. "Our framework is now on the table that will end this crisis in a manner that meets our principles of smaller government,” House Speaker John Boehner told the press after reaching the deal with the White House.